The full election results and details of the total number of
people who voted in the Swaziland election last month have still not been
released.
Speculation is rife in the kingdom that the turnout of
voters might have been fewer than 100,000 – of the 600,000 people entitled to
vote. This was after prodemocracy groups campaigned for a boycott of the
elections in protest at their undemocratic nature.
The Communist Party of Swaziland in a statement said, ‘Only
just over 100,000 people voted in the primary elections. There was less than
that voting in the second round. This is about 500,000 fewer voters than the
Mswati regime trumpeted as likely to pack the voting stations. This is much
less than in the previous elections, suggesting that popular dissatisfaction
with the regime is increasing.’
Earlier the Swaziland United Democratic Front, a
prodemocracy group, reported the turnout at 80,000.
The Elections and Boundaries Commission announced the names
of the winners at each of the 55 constituencies promptly after voting took
place on 20 September 2013, but only gave the number of votes cast for 45 of
them. No figures were given for the losing candidates and the total number of
voters taking part in the election has not been revealed.
Sabelo Dlamini, a spokesperson for the Electoral Boundaries
Commission, which ran the election, told the Mail and Guardian newspaper in South Africa the number of actual
votes cast was still being ‘tallied’. He denied to the newspaper that this was
unusual or irregular and said, ‘This information is still being compiled and we
will publish it as soon as we know.’
However, this is clearly not true. If the number of votes a
winner received in each constituency is known, then so too are the number of
votes given to the losers. From here it is a simply step to add up the votes
across all constituencies and announce the total turnout. In elections in
democracies this is done immediately the vote is counted.
There is growing speculation about the size of the vote. The
Weekend Observer, a newspaper in
effect owned by King Mswati III, who
rules Swaziland as an absolute monarch, reported ‘about 400,000’ people took
part in the vote. If this were true the turnout would be about 97 percent, an
unlikely figure, especially when at the last election in 2008, the turnout was54 percent.
The election in Swaziland was controversial because the
kingdom is not a democracy. All political parties were banned from taking part
in the poll. Voters were only allowed to select 55 of the 65members of the
House of Assembly, the other 10 are appointed by the king. None of the members
of the 30-strong Senate House are elected by the people: the king appoints 20
members and the other 10 are elected by the House of Assembly.
The parliament has no real power as this rests with King
Mswati.
See also
KING’S PAPER CLAIMS 97% TURNOUT
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